Because we recently finished reading Remarkably Bright Creatures and have been reading several of William Shakespeare’s plays, I decided to share a few of my not-quite-polished short stories with my girls. Unlike the novels I’ve worked on and that my 17 year old has read parts of from time to time, my short stories are fictional pieces geared toward grown ups and I wanted to get their reaction and responses to a few of them. One of our local libraries does an Open Mic Night once a month, providing writers an opportunity to read from their work and I have been toying with the idea of reading one of my stories. I thought it might be fun to get my teenagers’ perspective on that piece.
Their thoughts and insight did not disappoint.
When I first headed to graduate school in Boston back in 1994, sharing my writing with others, especially other writers, filled me with anxious energy. While that process with my writing classes didn’t necessarily get a whole lot easier in my second or third years of my writing program, it definitely got a little easier with the small group of writer friends I put together after we got our degrees. For those who are not writers or artists, people who create things like sketches, paintings, music, songs, stories, sharing that work with someone is like allowing them a glimpse of your soul—it is vulnerable and can feel incredibly scary.
I’d like to say I feel less vulnerable these days, but that isn’t entirely true. Still, I am more likely to indulge my 17 year old when she asks if she can read one of my young adult novel drafts because she is invested in me as her mama, as a person, and her curiosity is rooted in that. Perhaps that’s why the other day I picked up the printed copy of my short story, Boston in the Spring and handed it to my 15 year old to read. Her sister had already read it, along with a few other stories, in a shared Google document, and didn’t have a lot to say about any of the stories. I was curious what my 15 year old might have to say, if anything.
Despite her initial response of, I don’t get it, as she sat with it and processed the main ideas and the characters, it turned out she had a lot to say. And, honestly, I loved what she had to say. I loved her response, but even more, I loved her insight. She didn’t like how it ended, and she didn’t like the main character, Sara’s choices leading to that end. She also had a vested interest in and empathy for Felix, who is the victim of Sara’s not-so-good choices (according to my 15 year old).
I loved our discussion. I loved going back and forth about why I thought Felix was also not entirely blameless when all was said and done. Sara is a server at a local pub and cafe and Felix is a writer who takes over one of the tables in her work station almost every night but never orders anything and never tips Sara except with scraps of poetry he leaves behind on the table when he heads out at the end of the night. My teen challenged me to consider Felix in greater detail, even writing the scene but from his point of view.
What a fantastic challenge. And when I told her I wasn’t sure I could do that because I didn’t really know Felix, she doubled down and told me it’s because I’d written him as a one-dimensional character. She was on fire and I loved it; she was like one of my former writing group members. Later that night, because she was still considering the story and Felix, she decided to sit down and write the scene from Felix’s point of view and it was a well-done scene indeed. I loved the way she captured Felix and how she decided to write him.
Today, my 17 year old was eager to read what her sister had written and also revisited my original story. Like her sister, she asked interesting questions, and I loved that she said she wasn’t sure what she thought or felt about Felix. She followed that up by asking me if it was okay that she wasn’t sure whether to like him or not and I loved that question because that was exactly what my husband and I had talked about in relation to this particular story, that I was leaving it in the minds of the readers to decide how they felt about Felix and about Sara’s choice that creates the surprise ending. I love that she was in the exact place with the characters and the story and even articulated it to me.
In many ways, writing is a solitary process, requiring the writer to spend much of the drafting process alone; for me, it’s pretty much trying to capture in words the moving pictures playing like a movie in my mind as the story unfolds. Of course, no book or short story or even a poem, remains solely the writer’s. At some point the writing process requires me to share my words and to solicit input from readers. I love that for this story I have a built-in writing group willing to offer their feedback and ideas, because I am not short on stories and they are not short on insights.